| Main Entry: | germ |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | microscopic organism, often causing illness |
Synonyms: |
antibody, bacterium, bug*, disease, microbe, microorganism, parasite, pathogen, plague, virus, what's going around |
| Main Entry: | germ |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | beginning |
Synonyms: |
bud, cause, egg, embryo, inception, nucleus, origin, ovule, ovum, root, rudiment, seed, source, spark, spore, sprig, sprout |
| Main Entry: | bacteria |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | microorganisms |
Synonyms: |
bacilli, germs, microbes, organisms, pathogens |
| Main Entry: | beginning |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | origin, cause |
Synonyms: |
antecedent, birth, conception, egg, embryo, font, fount, fountain, fountainhead, generation, genesis, germ, heart, principle, resource, root, seed, stem, well |
Antonyms: |
conclusion, outcome, result |
| Main Entry: | bud |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | new sprout on plant |
Synonyms: |
bloom, blossom, embryo, floret, germ, incipient flower, nucleus, shoot, spark |
| Main Entry: | bug |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | bacterium, microorganism |
Synonyms: |
bacillus, disease, germ, infection, microbe, virus |
| Notes: | a bug is a particular kind of insect, specifically belonging to the order Hemiptera (tough leathery forewings attached to the body - like ladybugs, beetles) while insects generally belong to the class Insecta, which have bodies in three segments, usually two pairs or wings and three pairs of legs (like bees, mosquitoes); spiders are not technically insects because they have four pairs of legs insect (from Latin animal insectum) literally meant 'divided animal' or 'cut up or into' from the segments of its body (head, thorax, abdomen) - the common word being 'bug'; insect is any of an extremely large group of small invertebrate animals - and most undergo metamorphosis while bug denotes a special group of insects with beaklike sucking mouth parts and partly membranous forewings |
| Main Entry: | cell |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | smallest living organism |
Synonyms: |
bacterium, cellule, corpuscle, egg, embryo, follicle, germ, haematid, microorganism, spore, unit, utricle, vacuole |
| Main Entry: | egg |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | seed, cell; embryo of an animal |
Synonyms: |
bud, cackle, cackleberry, germ, nucleus, oospore, ovum, roe, rudiment, spawn, yellow eye |
| Main Entry: | essence |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | heart, significance |
Synonyms: |
aspect, attribute, backbone, base, basis, be-all and end-all, being, bottom, bottom line, burden, caliber, character, chief constituent, constitution, core, crux, element, entity, essentia, essentiality, fiber, form, fundamentals, germ, grain, kernel, life, lifeblood, main idea, marrow, meaning, meat*, name of game, nature, nitty-gritty, nub, nucleus, pith, point, principle, property, quality, quiddity, quintessence, reality, root, soul, spirit, structure, stuff, substance, timber, vein, virtuality |
| Main Entry: | infection |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | contamination |
Synonyms: |
bug*, communicability, contagion, contagiousness, corruption, defilement, disease, epidemic, flu, germs, impurity, insanitation, poison, pollution, septicity, virus, what's going around |
Antonyms: |
sanitation, sterility |